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Gabrielle Luna
Gabrielle Nicolette Luna (born May 17, 1986) is American actress, comedian, and television personality. She is best known for her main role as Stacy Jonathon on Jonathon's Landing from 2001 to 2006. She has also starred as Veronica Jordan in AmErican Dreams (1989) and as Amber Black in SPLASH! (1998). Personal life Luna was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, the only child of actress Diana (Johnson) and George J. Luna, a manager of a local grocery store. Her father moved to Los Angeles from Saltillo, Mexico with his family when he was a child and lived there undocumented until he married Diana in 1984. Although her father was raised in the Roman Catholic church and her mother is a practicing Southern Baptist and they took her to church often as a child, Luna has described herself as not religious. She has said that she practices non-religious spirituality which includes mindful and ecological spiritual practices. When Luna was seven years old, her parents divorced and Luna began to live with her mother full-time. Her father remarried in 1995, and had two more children, Luna's step-siblings Isabel (1998) and Jason (2000). Her mother has been in a long-term relationship with director Marshal Thompson since 1999. Luna has admitted to suffering from bulimia nervosa since her teenage years and sought treatment at the Waverly Hills Recovery Center in 2014. Although she says she made significant progress after her first six-month inpatient stay and gained almost forty-five pounds (going from 95 to 140 pounds), she found it hard to maintain her progress under the constant criticism of the paparazzi and relapsed twice, returning to Waverly for outpatient treatment each time. She has since become a body-positivity advocate and often speaks on her show about eating disorders and their pyschological toll, especially on women in the industry. In 2019, while speaking to nutrition expert Dr. Henry Stetson on her show, Luna announced that she weighed 192 pounds in an attempt to promote body positivity. She is a practicing vegetarian. Luna has been in a relationship with fellow actor Ryan Collins since August 2020. Career Television and movie roles As a former actress herself, Luna's mother Diana pushed her daughter to follow in her footsteps. Luna starred in her first national commercial campaign for Milk when she was just two years old. She continued to star in commercial roles for the next two years, including commercials for Oreos, American Airlines, and Toys 'R' Us. At the age of three, Luna landed the recurring role of Veronica Jordan in the 1989 sitcom AmErican Dreamers playing the youngest daughter of comedy legend Randy Oliver's character. Luna was promoted to a series regular in the second season and played the role until the show's finale, ending after eight seasons. After the end of AmErican Dreamers ''in 1997, Luna told her mother that she didn't want to be an actress anymore. Luna quit acting and attended fourth and fifth grades at the Dearborn School in Los Angeles. She changed her mind during the middle of her fifth-grade year and started going on auditions again. She left the school when she was cast as Amber Black in the short-lived teen sitcom ''SPLASH! (1999). The show ran for two seasons and ended in 2000. After the end of SPLASH!, Luna was cast in her most successful role yet as Stacy Jonathon in the teen drama Jonathon's Landing ''(2001). The series debuted on the IV channel on February 16, 2001 and ran for five seasons, ending on May 13, 2005. The show brought the IV channel its highest ratings in the channel's history, and kept that honor until the run of the popular 2009 show ''Theater Camp. Merchandise for the show, including VHS tapes and later DVDs, earned more than $200 million dollars. After Jonathon's Landing, Luna decided to make a serious transition into film. She starred in several independent films between 2006 and 2010. Her role in the Jean Renaud film Les Amies (which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival) earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the 2009 Academy Awards, although she lost to Kate Winslet. In 2010 she returned to the small screen as one of the several members of the ensemble cast of the critically acclaimed mini-series Void, which produced season-long anthologies of alternate universes for the same cast of characters. The show won several Best Miniseries and Best Ensemble Cast Emmys and Golden Globes, and Luna won two Best Actress Emmys and one Golden Globe for her role as Evelyn Berra. The mini-series ended in 2016. Luna was approached by former AmErican Dreamers writers in 2015, having heard that Void would be entering its final season that year. They proposed a sitcom in which Luna would star as the main character, a young professional trying to make her way in the city. The Gabrielle Show ''premiered in September 2017 and ended in spring 2018. Talk show In October 2018, Luna was reported to be in talks to begin her own afternoon talk show. The show was confirmed in OPB's fall broadcasting line-up and the show started in September 2019. Her first season guests included James Whitmore, Lauren Graber, and the cast of her alma mater ''Jonathon's Landing (excluding castmate Emily Geiger). The show won three Daytime Emmys in its first season and has collected nine to date. Filmography Film Television